


Project Nova

by ofstormsandwolves



Series: nevertheless, she persisted [2]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Amputation, Angst, Dimension-Hopping Rose, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Injury, Pete's World Torchwood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-08
Updated: 2017-08-08
Packaged: 2018-12-12 23:48:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11747706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ofstormsandwolves/pseuds/ofstormsandwolves
Summary: Eighteen months into life in Pete's World, Rose finds herself being kept in the dark about a new threat to the universe. As the stars start going out, can she convince Pete and herself that an injury sustained when she first arrived in Pete's World won't hinder her ability to help find the Doctor?





	Project Nova

The stars were going out.

That much, Rose knew. She’d heard her parents talking about it at night when they thought she was asleep. She’d tried asking Mickey and Jake but they were oddly evasive, no doubt due to her dad threatening bodily harm if they were to reveal the extent of the problem.

Because it _was_ a problem. It was obviously a problem; stars didn’t just vanish without cause. While Rose had never exactly been great at astronomy, she’d learned enough travelling with the Doctor to know that stars did not simply vanish. They burned up, burned out, died, but never just ‘vanished’.

But that’s what Pete was saying was happening, that’s what the whispered conversations in the dark were about, the hushed tones of her parents as they argued whether or not to tell her. They’d had the same argument every night for the past week, and every night Rose had listened from the stairs. It made her feel like a little kid, sat on the stairs in her pyjamas, listening to the quiet arguments of her parents from the sitting room. 

Pete wanted to keep her in the dark, Rose had gathered, while Jackie felt like Rose might be able to shed some light on the situation. Rose wasn’t sure if her mum saw the irony in that statement or not, but regardless of that, Jackie had a point. Clearly those at Torchwood didn’t know what to do, the small team Pete had quietly assembled clearly at a loss for what was causing the problem. Rose knew that Mickey and Jake were part of that team; she’d seen them talk with her dad quietly in hallways, or hurry to confidential meetings with him, and had heard her dad tell her mum that fact too.

But they had yet to turn to Rose for help.

And Rose knew why. It wasn’t that they thought she couldn’t help them, it wasn’t that she wasn’t experienced enough, or that they wanted to deliberately exclude her out of spite. It was because they thought they were doing the right thing. 

Ever since she’d been brought to Pete’s World, and suffered the life-changing injuries the dimension hop had caused, things had changed. Yes, she’d gained a father, and a baby brother who was currently asleep upstairs. Yes she now lived in a mansion, and had her best friend Mickey back. But she had also lost a leg. She was an amputee, and that, Rose knew, was the reason they were keeping the information from her. Although she worked for Torchwood, she was on a desk job only, working with research and development and aiding cases from the safety of Torchwood tower.

It had been eighteen months since she and Jackie had arrived, ten months since she’d said goodbye to the Doctor on that god-forsaken beach in Norway, and every time she had tried to bring up the possibility of transferring to a field team Pete had evaded the conversation. He had thought that keeping Rose in an office job was for the best, for her own safety. That she needed protecting, from the aliens, from the hazards of field work, from the outside world, from herself. She knew it was because he had readily taken on the role of her father, and that he loved her too dearly to risk losing her, but Rose couldn’t help but be frustrated with Pete’s actions. Particularly when there seemed to be a universe-wide crisis and Earth was in the middle of it.

“Why don’t you ask Rose?” Jackie asked, voice rising enough to make Rose sit up and take notice from her usual spot on the grand staircase. “You said yourself, you have no idea what the problem might be, and neither do Jake or Mickey. Just ask Rose, she might be able to help!”

Pete sighed, and Rose could almost see the exasperated look on his face even though he was the other side of a wall. “I don’t want to involve Rose in this, Jaqs, and you know why. I don’t want her out on the field, and if I involve her in this case...”

There was silence, unsaid words hanging in the darkness of the house.

Then, Rose heard Jackie snort softly. “And you really think a prosthetic leg is gonna stop our daughter? She’ll find out what’s going on at some point, Pete, and you can’t keep her in the dark forever. Just because... Just because Rose is physically disabled doesn’t mean she’s not the same person who travelled with the Doctor. And considerin’ we don’t have the Doctor right now, Rose is the closest thing we’ve got. You need her help.”

“Jaqs, I know that. But how do I even ask her? She’s not the Doctor, and we can’t expect her to be. But if she could shed some light on the situation...”  
Pete sighed again. “I’d just really like some insight on this problem, but I don’t want to burden Rose with it. She’s been through enough.”

At Pete’s words, Rose frowned from her seat on the stairs. She glanced down briefly at where her prosthetic leg protruded from the bottom of her pyjama bottoms, and then she hauled herself to her feet and made her way down the stairs. As she made her way down, she heard her parents freeze in the sitting room, whispering to each other like they knew they were about to be caught.

As she opened the door and found both Pete and Jackie blinking guiltily at her from the sofa in front of the fireplace, Rose just quirked an eyebrow at them, folding her arms across her chest.

“Was there something you needed my help with, Dad?”

~0~0~

Within two weeks, Rose was deep into Project Nova, the codename for the project researching the strange disappearance of the stars. It had been obvious a codename was needed considering just how small the number of employees at Torchwood was- they now had more than when Rose had just arrived, but were still barely pushing 150- and they didn’t want anyone knowing about the project who didn’t have to. The codename allowed them to discuss certain elements of the project among the company of others without breaching any sort of confidentiality or risking important information being leaked.

The Project Nova team was small, with Pete overseeing the whole thing, along with Mickey and Jake, a handful of Torchwood employees, and now Rose.

Already there was a lot for Rose to catch up on, and some of it made her head hurt. She tried her best to keep up, though, because she knew that if Pete got the slightest hint she might not be physically or mentally fit enough to be on the team he would put her back behind her desk. Her dad hadn’t wanted her on the team, had wanted to shield her from anything that meant field work. Even after over a year he had concerns about her prosthetic; she’d been off the crutches for ages, but she knew that Pete worried, and that her mum thought she overdid it some days. And some days she did, but she was learning. She was learning to gage how far she could push herself, how far she could go before she regretted it the next day, with aches and pains and blisters from the prosthetic. But she didn’t want to let that get in the way now, not when she was finally involved in a Torchwood case that reminded her of her adventures with the Doctor. She could finally start making a difference at Torchwood, help out on cases, and prove herself to her parents.

So she forced herself to focus on how the information coming in from space stations and satellites were helping them build an image of what they were up against, how Torchwood technology aided that and allowed them to scan portions of space light years from Earth. Rose listened as Mickey explained about their latest technologies and the readings they’d got from the spaces the missing stars should have occupied; she made notes as scientists talked about the life span of stars, and how the disappearances seemed random and in a pattern that did not indicate a natural end to the stars’ lives. Some of them were relatively young, it had been explained, too young for them to die so soon, and that only heightened the suspicion something was wrong. They just didn’t know what.

All in all, it seemed that there was a lot for Rose to catch up on but very little in the way of progress.

“So what you’re saying,” Rose asked finally when her second Project Nova meeting drew to a close, “is that something seems to be... Taking the stars. Killing, or destroying them somehow?”

“Well, yeah,” Jake nodded with a frown. “It’s not just that they’re dying, they’re completely vanishing. At least, the ones in nearby solar systems are. If they were naturally dying, they’d leave some sort of residual image on our scanners, but we’ve got nothing. It’s like they’re being erased.”

At Jake’s words, Rose frowned, and looked around the table at the rest of the group. “Well, how’s that possible?” she asked.

She was met with no answers. Pete became fascinated with some paperwork in front of him, Mickey looked away, and many other agents shifted uncomfortably in their seats.

“We were hoping you could help with that,” Pete admitted eventually. “We’re at a dead end. We don’t know what else to do."

Rose blinked at that, and sat back in her seat, considering the situation. “I don’t know what to do,” she admitted slowly after a long moment. “I mean, I’ve never come across anything like this before.” She sighed. “We need the Doctor, Dad. I can’t help.”

There were looks from other agents then, all as if they were having a silent conversation of ‘I told you so’. Rose bristled slightly. Yes, she was the boss’s daughter, and she’d been brought in on a case it seemed she couldn’t help, but then many of these people were scientists and they were just as clueless as her.

“Believe me, love, if we could get to the Doctor, we would,” Pete told her. “But right now, you’re the best we’ve got.”

She frowned, processing her dad’s words. “So if we could get to the Doctor...”

“But we can’t, babe,” Mickey reminded her from the opposite side of the table. “No way back. Remember? We took a risk getting you here, there’s no way we’re trying that again.”

“No, but that’s only because of the dimension hopper,” Rose argued, only half paying attention to what she was saying. The other half of her mind had wandered, back down the corridor to her usual office and the black leather-bound notebook in her desk drawer. “The dimension hopper wasn’t stable enough to carry two people, that’s why me and Dad got hurt. An’ it only worked once the Cybermen had broken down the Void because it wasn’t powerful enough. If we could build something bigger, somethin’ stronger, then maybe we could cross the Void again.”

A tall bloke Rose wasn’t very familiar with snorted from the other end of the table. “And then what? Everything collapses into the Void?”

Rose rolled her eyes. “Well, no, ‘cause we’ll stabilise it, obviously.” She shook her head. “Look, even if it’s only to send a message through the Void, to reach out to the Doctor, maybe that will be enough.”

“And this Doctor of yours,” a woman asked with an arched eyebrow and sceptical expression, “does he often come running when you call?”

Rose and Pete both fixed the woman with a glare but Mickey smirked.

“Killer Christmas trees on Christmas Eve,” Mickey reminded Rose with a grin. “Babe, that bloke woke up from a coma to rescue you.”

Rose pointedly ignored Mickey’s words, as well as the sceptical looks from the woman who’d first asked about the Doctor, and instead gathered her notes as everyone started to leave the boardroom.

~0~0~

“I’ve got these sketches.”

Pete looked up in confusion at the sound of Rose’s voice. He was working in his home study, something that was normal for him even on weekdays, and while he always tried to put some time aside to spend with Jackie, Rose, and baby Tony, he found himself in his study more evenings than not.

“Rose,” he began uncertainly. “What’s this about?”

Rose shifted uncomfortably, a leather-bound notebook in her hands as she hovered just inside the study doorway. “It’s about what I said in the Project Nova meeting, three days ago. About the new dimension hopper. I’ve got some drawings.”

She made her way across the study, almost uncertainly, and held out the notebook to her dad. He took it, idly noting that it was the notebook he and Jackie had bought Rose in with her Christmas presents three months previously. Still somewhat confused, he flipped the book open, and saw that it was already nearly half full with notes and sketches. And all the sketches seemed to be of technological devices, one that resembled the dimension hoppers they’d since retired, and a new, much bigger device that Pete hadn’t seen before.

“You’ve... You’ve designed a new dimension hopper,” he said after he’d looked through the notes and drawings and processed everything.

Rose nodded, biting at her thumbnail. “I don’t know how accurate some of it is,” she told him quietly. “And maybe some of the materials aren’t great. I don’t know, you might wanna get the tech team on the project to look over it, see if it’s any use.”

She was backing towards the door as she spoke, almost as if she were expecting it all to be completely useless to the project, like she was withdrawing herself before Pete could tell her that it was a waste of time.

“How long have you had this?” Pete asked, holding the notebook up to Rose as he spoke. “Not the notebook, but the idea.”

She shrugged, looked a little embarrassed. “On and off for a while,” she admitted softly. “Only started thinking of it as a serious, possible thing in the last few months, though.”

There was a long pause. “Before you were assigned to Project Nova?” Pete asked even though they both knew the answer.

Despite that, Rose nodded in confirmation. Pete nodded back, and dropped the notebook to his desk. Somewhere several doors away, they heard the sound of Tony beginning to wail, and they shared an exhausted smile. Pete pushed himself to his feet, making his way around the desk.

“I’d better go give your mum a hand. Think it’s my turn to be on nappy duty,” he said as he moved across the room.

Rose nodded again, and together they made their way out of the office together. Rose began heading to her room, while Pete made for the nursery, but halfway there Pete paused.

“Rose?” he asked, causing her to turn around. “I’ll pass those drawings on to the Project Nova tech team. I think they might be of some use.”

~0~0~

Within a month, the techs on Project Nova had decided that Rose’s new dimension hopper was worth a shot. While there were still concerns about what would happen should they use the dimension hopper to cross the Void again, yet more stars were disappearing and it was becoming clear that they had to try something.

So they set to work on assembling the new dimension hopping system, using Rose’s idea of a larger device to act as the hub for the hoppers. The plan was that the large device would be the one to power the hoppers, rather than just using the Torchwood computers. With a designated device with the sole purpose to power the hoppers and stabilise the breach between universes, they were hoping that it would make the trips a lot safer than when they’d travelled with the dimension hoppers over a year and a half previously. The tech team had actually been very impressed with Rose’s idea to build a central hub to control the hoppers, and one of them had even ribbed Mickey about not thinking of it himself.

But even after the new dimension hopping system was assembled, and even after all the praise from everyone on Project Nova, they couldn’t seem to get the device working. By the time Rose had been on Project Nova four months, they were both so much closer and so much further away than ever before. The promise of the new hopping system put them so much closer to a breakthrough than all the meetings and research they’d been doing, and yet with no way to get the system up and running, it seemed they were back at square one.

And to make things worse, they had an angry Jackie to contend to at home.

“You know Tony’s crawling now?” Jackie asked Pete angrily over dinner. “Our little boy started crawling nearly a month ago and you’ve hardly been around to see it! He’s eight months old, Pete, an’ you hardly spend any time with him! You’re missing so much!”

Pete sighed, setting his tea down and taking a breath. “I know, Jaqs. And believe me, I’m no happier I’m missing all of Tony’s firsts than you are. But Rose’s dimension hopping system gave us a breakthrough, and we just need to get it up and running-”

“And that’s another thing,” Jackie started up again. “You’re pushing our daughter too hard! Look at her, Pete! She’s exhausted! And have you even stopped to ask why she’s not wearing her prosthetic?”

Pete blinked, and chanced a glance under the table at Rose’s legs. He blinked, when he saw she wasn’t wearing her prosthetic, and only then did the crutches beside her chair register in his mind.

“Is everything alright?” he asked worriedly, already moving to get to his feet. “Rose? Do you need to go to hospital?”

“Dad, I’m fine,” Rose sighed, gesturing for him to sit down again before rubbing her forehead. “I just got a bit hot today at work, and with the heat wave my prosthetic ended up rubbing. I’ve got a couple of blisters, an’ I’ll probably have to take my crutches into work tomorrow, but I’m fine. Mum’s just overreacting.”

Jackie frowned at that. “Overreacting?” she echoed. “Rose, you can’t wear your prosthetic! You’re exhausted from all the long hours you’ve been pulling on this silly project of yours, and now you’re going to be on crutches too. I’m not overreacting!”

“But you can’t blame Dad for the fact my prosthetic rubbed,” Rose pointed out calmly. “He didn’t make London have a heat wave!”

“No, but he is the one making you work so hard at work!”

“We need to finish the dimension hopping system,” Pete interrupted calmly. “Without that, we’re at a dead end.”

Jackie huffed at that, before scowling. “If you’re going to keep talking about it, can’t you at least come up with a better name for it than that?”

Pete and Rose shared a baffled look at Jackie’s words, while baby Tony cooed to himself in his highchair. Almost automatically, Pete reached out to offer his son his hand as the baby strained to reach him.

“And can you think of a better name for it, then?” he asked, sounding a little disgruntled.

Jackie shrugged. “I don’t know,” she replied. “But anything’s better than ‘dimension hopping system’.”

Rose blinked, unsure whether to laugh or not. “But that’s what it is, Mum.”

“I know, but can’t you call it something else?” Jackie questioned. “Like, I don’t know, a dimension cannon, or something?”

At Jackie’s words, Pete sat up a little straighter in his chair, attention drawn away from baby Tony and back to Rose and Jackie. Jackie blinked as her husband and daughter stared at her.

“What?”

“Nothing,” Pete shook his head, “but it’s just, that could actually work.”

Rose nodded in agreement as Jackie sniffed. 

“Don’t know why you sound so surprised,” she told them before stabbing at her dinner with her fork.

~0~0~

Three weeks later, everything changed. The Torchwood monitoring systems went mad; Pete and Rose found themselves called in to work in the dead of night, along with Mickey and Jake, and within moments of their arrival at Torchwood tower they were informed that the newly-dubbed ‘dimension cannon’ had seemingly fired up on his own.

“It’s like the dimensions are collapsing,” Mickey observed once they looked over the data. “I don’t know what’s causing it, but I don’t think it’s just this world, boss.”

He glanced up at Pete then, who shifted warily. 

“What do you mean? How do you know it’s not just us?” Pete asked in confusion.

Mickey shook his head. “I can’t say for certain, but according to these readings... According to these readings, the whole of reality is collapsing. We’re not gonna stop this on our own. We don’t have the technology.”

Rose frowned from where she’d been stood in the corner of Pete’s office, watching Jake pace and Mickey look over data and Pete panic. “But the cannon’s working,” she reminded them. “Can’t we use it to find the Doctor? If it’s not just our world, maybe he’s noticed something too. Maybe he knows how to fix it.”

At her words, Mickey sighed. “Babe, it’s not just universes that are collapsing. I had Jake run a scan...” He shared a look with the other bloke then, and didn’t continue.

“And?” Pete pressed, frowning.

“And even the Void’s dead,” Jake completed calmly. “We’re getting no readings from it. Before, when the Cybermen opened the Void, we got some residual readings, and it’s what made the hoppers work. When the cannon fired up, the first thing we did was scan the Void. We thought maybe the breach had opened again, that something had gone wrong. But there’s nothing. No data whatsoever. Whatever it is that’s destroying the stars, it’s destroyed the Void too.”

Rose swallowed, before chancing a glance at her dad and the various other Project Nova agents who’d been called in at the crack of dawn. “We need to contact the Doctor. Even if it’s just a message. _We need the Doctor_.”

~0~0~

By the time the two year anniversary of their arrival in Pete’s World rolled around, Rose had sent several messages across the now-dead Void. None of them had been picked up, certainly not by the Doctor, but also it seemed not by anyone else.

So they’d decided to step everything up. Stars were still disappearing, the Void was dead, and whatever they were facing, it was becoming clear Torchwood couldn’t face it alone. Just as Rose had said, they needed the Doctor, and there was one person the Doctor would follow anywhere.

They needed Rose to do a jump.

Jackie had been furious when the idea was first suggested, and had been even more furious when she’d discovered that the dimension cannon had been designed by Rose even before she’d joined Project Nova. After everything they’d been through in the last two years, Jackie had known her daughter was unhappy, but to have been actively designing a time travel device to take her back across the breach, and then keep it secret, had really angered Jackie.

Maybe that had been why she’d put Tony into the Torchwood nursery and started working at Torchwood herself. She’d taken it upon herself to be one of the supervising agents for Rose’s jumps, ready to elbow anyone and everyone out of the way if she had to, just to check her little girl was safe.

But they’d not even done a jump yet. Mickey and the other techs were still fine-tuning it. Rose had been checked over by Verity, had been advised on safe landings so as not to damage her prosthetic upon landing, and had even been told to get new clothes to help with the travelling through the Void. It had to be comfortable, and not too bulky, and something that would offer at least some protection from both hot and cold climates.

So Rose had gone shopping, and with the help of Jackie had returned with a new outfit to help complete her jumps. Black jeans and sturdy boots had been a must, but the blue-purple leather jacket had been somewhat of an indulgence. Jackie had encouraged her to buy it, and Rose hadn’t been able to help herself.

When Mickey saw her in it, he grinned. “All you’re missing is big ears and a northern accent,” he teased when he saw what she was wearing.

Rose flashed him a tired smile at his words, but said nothing. Instead, she turned her attention to Pete, who was watching everything in silence.

“Are we ready, then?” she asked quietly.

“Ready when you are,” Pete confirmed with a small smile. Then he paused, almost like he couldn’t decide if he wanted to speak again. “You don’t have to do this, you know.”

But Rose bit her lip. “I have to, Dad. We need him. I need him. An’ I’ll be fine. It’s just a test jump, yeah?” 

Her voice wavered, though neither of them mentioned it. It was almost cruel irony that it was virtually the anniversary of their arrival in Pete’s World that Rose was once more expected to make a jump. She’d hardly slept in the nights leading up to it, a phantom ache in a limb that was no longer there and a headache behind her eyes at the thought of all the things that could go wrong.

She had to do it, she knew. But that didn’t stop her from being afraid. She hadn’t done anything remotely similar to this since arriving in Pete’s World. She’d been on desk duty, had never officially been trained as a field agent, and her time spent running with the Doctor seemed so long ago now that a very small part of Rose was terrified. Just a few years ago she’d absorbed the time vortex without a second thought, and now she feared a routine dimension hop. If only she was nineteen again, if only she’d never been injured on her arrival in this new world, if only she wouldn’t let the fear dominate her...

A hand on her shoulder then, turning her, and she found herself staring up at her oldest friend with wide eyes.

“I’m scared, Mickey.”

He gave her a sympathetic smile. “I know. And that’s fine. It’ll go fine.” He glanced over their shoulder at where Jackie was watching everything with her arms folded across her chest. “I reckon if you go silent on us your mum will be the first to grab a hopper and go after you.”

Rose nodded slowly at that, trying to force herself to calm. “Yeah,” she agreed softly. “I just feel stupid, I suppose. I don’t know why I’m so scared. After everythin’ I’ve done...”

“Hey, it’s not stupid to be scared,” Mickey interrupted. “Last time you did something like this, you lost a leg. You’ve been out of action ever since. You’ve just gotta find your feet again.”

Rose arched an eyebrow at his choice of words, and Mickey cursed under his breath as he processed what he’d said.

“You know what I mean,” he huffed. “I bet once you get out there it’ll all come back to you.”

Rose nodded again, distractedly, as she stared at Mickey’s shoulder rather than his face. “The Doctor wouldn’t be scared.”

“You’re not the Doctor, babe,” Mickey said gently, hands on Rose’s shoulders, squeezing gently. He was smiling though, that soft grin that had made Rose fall in love with him all those years ago. “You’re not the Doctor. You’re better than that. Alright? Like I said, you’ve been through a lot. But I bet it’s just like riding a bike, yeah? You just need to get out there again.”

Before Rose could respond, Jake was calling for her across the room, and when she turned to look he had the dimension hopper and required gun in his hands. She sighed, and felt Mickey squeeze her shoulder once more.

She took a breath, pulling away from Mickey and making to cross the floor, but found herself grabbed by Jackie halfway to Jake. Rose barely registered the worried expression on her mum’s face before she was pulled in for a tight hug.

“Be safe, sweetheart,” Jackie mumbled into Rose’s ear. 

Rose nodded, pulling away from her mum and forcing a smile. “I’ll be fine.” 

If Jackie saw that the smile didn’t reach her eyes, she said nothing. Instead, she nodded back, squeezing Rose’s hand one last time. Upon releasing Rose, Jackie watched as her daughter crossed the room, took her hopper and her gun from Jake, and took her position.

The countdown started, one of the techs calling out the numbers aloud as they counted down, and in an instant Jackie saw the look of fear that flashed across her daughter’s features.

Across the room, Rose’s and Jackie’s eyes locked, and Jackie gave her daughter a reassuring smile.

“Go on, love,” Jackie said, and she watched as Rose shakily returned her smile. “Make the Doctor proud.”

And Rose vanished in a flash of light.


End file.
